Articles posted in October, 2003

New “Apple Peel” column at Applelust.com

Friday, October 31st, 2003 • 11:48 am

My latest “Apple Peel” column is up at Applelust.com. “Mac Blogging with mySQL and PHP: A Short Trip Through Unix Hell” It pretty much explains what I have been up to in the past few days when it comes to maintaining this blog. It was definitely a learning experience.

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Rocky Time

Thursday, October 30th, 2003 • 1:42 am

My apologies to Betalogue readers for the disruption of the past 24 hours or so. A combination of server problems and backup recovery issues caused the contents of the blog to disappear for a while. Things should be back to normal now, except that some non-7-bit characters in reader comments are not encoded properly. I […]

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New “Recent Comments” box

Tuesday, October 28th, 2003 • 6:46 pm

As you must have noticed if you read this blog on the web, the Betalogue home page now features a new “Recent Comments” box on the right-hand side of your web browser window. It automatically lists compact excerpts of the 5 most recent comments posted anywhere by anyone on the blog. Each excerpt is followed […]

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Salon.com on copy-protecting HDTV

Tuesday, October 28th, 2003 • 2:24 am

Salon has a long feature article on the push by the MPAA to force the computer industry to embrace copy-protection technology for HDTV. It quotes both sides extensively, which means that you have to go through a whole lot of gobbledegook from the MPAA. As the EFF’s von Lohmann explains, the proposed copy-protection scheme for […]

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Panther and Spell Catcher X

Monday, October 27th, 2003 • 11:48 pm

I haven’t installed Panther yet. The reason is simple: I don’t have it. My copy of Panther has been ordered through Apple Canada Education but, as usual, there is no indication of when it will actually ship. I’m hoping to receive it in the next few days. I am certainly growing impatient, especially since the […]

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EPL: Day 10, Part 2

Monday, October 27th, 2003 • 12:08 am

Pretty boring encounter between Charlton and Arsenal at The Valley, ending in a predictable 1-1 draw. Subpar performances by many Arsenal players (Ljunberg, Lauren, Pires, Bergkamp, etc.), solid performances by the defense, which was only broken by a rather debatable penalty decision, cheekily transformed by Paolo Di Canio before he had to be substituted due […]

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EPL: Day 10, Part 1

Saturday, October 25th, 2003 • 11:45 pm

The Manchester United vs. Fulham game at Old Trafford, won 3-1 by the Londoners, was absolutely brilliant. Man U were obviously not prepared for the challenge posed by this decidedly surprising Fulham team. They were 1 down after five minutes and were very lucky not to be two or three goals down by the end […]

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Apple cares

Saturday, October 25th, 2003 • 5:31 pm

While I frequently complain about the time it takes for Apple to fix seemingly simple, yet very annoying bugs in their system software, I should also point out that Apple regularly give us good reason not to give up on them. Now that Panther is out (although I have yet to receive my copy), Apple […]

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Candid talk from Arsène Wenger

Saturday, October 25th, 2003 • 12:20 am

A recent Yahoo! Sport article contains several surprisingly candid quotes from Arsenal boss Arsène Wenger, who analyses the club’s on-going difficulties in the Champions League, the lack of depth of the squad, etc. He also mentions Vieira’s recurring injury and the fact that playing him in mid-week was a mistake. What I fail to understand, […]

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Interview with Mike Bombich, author of Carbon Copy Cloner

Friday, October 24th, 2003 • 10:48 pm

The xlr8yourmac web site has an interview with Mike Bombich, the author of the popular Carbon Copy Cloner utility. While such interviews are often rather technical, it’s always interesting to hear the point of view of Mac software developers. I personally have never used Carbon Copy Cloner, but I imagine that it will happen sooner […]

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Jean-Louis Murat, « Cavalier seul » (inédit, 1999)

Friday, October 24th, 2003 • 10:16 pm

Je suppose que ce n’est pas une coïncidence si les morceaux de Murat qui me donnent envie d’écrire semblent être, pour la plupart, des morceaux lents et dépouillés. Après « Royal Cadet » et « Je me donne », voici donc « Cavalier seul ». Une fois encore, Jean-Louis Murat est seul à la guitare acoustique (et à l’harmonica vers la […]

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New “error correction” feature for audio CDs in iTunes 4.1

Thursday, October 23rd, 2003 • 10:09 pm

A while back, I mentioned that I was having trouble importing certain audio CD tracks into iTunes, and that the problems appeared to be due to iTunes incorrectly flagging these tracks as “copy protected” when they obviously weren’t (because the audio CDs in question were from the early 1990s, way before copy protected CDs started […]

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“Coupling” in North America and DVDs

Thursday, October 23rd, 2003 • 5:31 am

With the American version of the hit BBC comedy Coupling apparently tanking after only a couple of episodes have been aired, it’s hardly surprising that US distributors are scrambling to milk the little bit of interest that the series has generated so far. Hence the forthcoming release of the… second season of the English version […]

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Champions League: Kiev 2 – Arsenal 1

Wednesday, October 22nd, 2003 • 1:39 am

So Arsenal lost in Kiev (2-1), and their future in the Champions League is looking very bleak now. They have 1 point out of a possible 9 and are dead last of their GROUP — the only team without a single win. Now the little bit of good news is that Inter Milan lost 3-0 […]

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Hardware flaw in Nikon Coolpix 5000

Wednesday, October 22nd, 2003 • 12:54 am

I bought my Nikon Coolpix 5000 back in December 2001. I am still quite pleased with it overall, although the appearance of several dead pixels over time has been somewhat disappointing. We have been driving along the Cabot Trail on Cape Breton Island in the past few days, and I have the camera and my […]

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